Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Further Perils of a Free Press

Mullin, 56, soon found himself mired in another huge controversy after publishing a cover story headlined ''Meth Made Easy'' that included a recipe for manufacturing methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug.

Readers were outraged, businesses yanked ads and citizens swiped thousands of copies of the Feb. 2 issue from news racks, Mullin says. He got hate mail and irate phone calls. "The voice mails were just vicious. I stopped counting the death threats.''He printed the meth recipe knowing he'd get heat. ''I thought, and I still think, that it served a couple of good purposes. It was very, very explicit in letting people know what is in meth, what the ingredients are -- really, really awful stuff. Acetone, brake cleaner . . . '' He also figured it would grab people's attention "to keep it from suffering the fate of so many meth articles -- they don't get read.''

Besides, he says, meth recipes are all over the Internet.

Good point. Someone should tell those irate Muslims that blasphemy lives forever in cyberspace.